The (Wry) Darkness Within
by avalanche1
Summary: Sharply composed, this story has many spiteful undertones. No offense to the characters, of course: I love them.


Disclaimer: Not my characters, but certainly my twisted mind controlling them into these perverse actions.  
  
  
"Ah, Ron?"  
"Harry?"  
"Could you hand me that thingy over there?"  
"The slice of pizza?"  
"No."   
"Um, the empty can of diet coke? Harry, do you have weight problems?"  
"No, no."  
"This crumpled and hole-ridden picture of Draco?"  
"Ah, geez, Ron, where did you find that?"  
"Under your pillow."  
"It's not mine. Put it back where you found it."  
"Harry, you're not gay are you? I mean, obsessed with your weight and all…?"  
"I put it on my dartboard. Please, just hand me the thingy I asked for."  
"What thingy? Harry, I have no idea what you're talking about."  
Harry sighed and stretched, then turned to face the confused redheaded boy. Extending a finger, he said, "That. That thingy. Hand it here, please."  
Ron's cloudy eyes cleared. "Oh. Sheez, Harry, why didn't you just say so?"  
Harry turned away so that Ron couldn't see the blush on his pale face. "I can't pronounce it."  
"It's okay, Harry. I won't tell." Ron picked up the thingy and placed it into Harry's hand. "It's a-"  
A yelp of what could have possibly been pain but might have been a goosed teenager pierced the air of the Gryffindor's common room. Actually, it wasn't that common of a room, as Modern Wizard Educational Institutions had stated, with the pool table and fireplace and the magic roulette wheel which was often accused of being rigged. It was actually ranked in the top five places that a wizard might want to spend his free time. The only one who could fail to concur would be, of course, the one who had yelped, but not all common rooms had young yelpers, which made it all the more uncommon.  
Harry paid no heed to this. "What's it called, Ron?"  
Ron paid no need to Harry. "What was that?"  
Harry was irritated. "I'm not too sure; you were about to pronounce it for me."  
"No, not this. That terrible sound."  
"I can pronounce that. It was a yelp, Ron. Now, hand me the thingy…" Harry trailed off as he realized that the held the thingy in his hand as he spoke. "I mean, what's it called?"  
"It's a flashlight." Suddenly, the lights flickered in the Gryffindor's unusual room, then turned off entirely.  
"Don't worry," an assured, masculine voice asserted, "we still have the light from the fireplace!"  
"Oh, drat, forgot that," another voice muttered. A cold breeze swept through the room and the fireplace was snuffed out.  
The original masculine voice spoke up again. "Don't worry! We still have the lanterns."  
The muttering voice muttered again. "Somebody help me with these lights, please, it's going to take me forever to burn them all out."  
Since nobody volunteered, they all waited in horrified, huddled silence for the next twenty minutes as the muttering voice went to each lantern and individually snuffed out the light. During this period, Harry had a revelation. In a hushed, frantic voice, he explained his plan to Ron. "Do you think we could-and this is just shooting in the dark, no pun intended-use this fl-flash-fla-thingy to see our way around and escape?"  
Ron considered this. "Yes; yes we can. But to where do we go?"  
"I have an idea," a tiny voice piped up. Neville Longbottom. Ron and Harry whirled around and peered at the small boy. For such a miniscule human wizard, Neville sure did have quite the elongated posterior. Perhaps it could be used to promote their escape.  
"Well, don't keep it a secret, boy." Harry tapped his foot with impatience, until he ran out of impatience and just tapped it with the end of his finger.  
Suddenly, and without warning and no prelude or heed, the Neville died.  
"Nev?" Harry questioned softly, poking the dormmate in his plush side.  
Neville rolled over and died again.  
"Well, that was redundant," Ron said with disgust.  
"Wait a minute, will you, Ron?" Harry said. He paused, and Ron waited. "No, no tears. I was just making sure that I didn't need to have the orchestra strike up sad music." He dismissed the orchestra with a wave. The orchestra scuttled off, exclaiming, "What a relief-all I know is Ode to Joy and Pomp and Circumstance!"  
"Both very apt," Ron remarked. "What do we do about Neville's body?"  
Harry gazed at Ron for a moment, his eyes sharp and hard. It hurt his eyelids, so he blinked, and they went back to normal. That didn't stop the anger flashing behind them. "What, so now you think I'm gay and necrophilliac?"  
"Not particularly." At this point, they were sitting in pitch darkness, which obscurely meant that the muttering voice was ready to act. "I have a question that pertains to the now deceased Neville."  
"Which is?"  
"What do you think his plan was?"  
"What plan?"  
"To escape. He had a plan, Harry. A plan…to escape."  
Lightning flashed outside, illuminated the frighteningly wise face Ron. Harry observed this from the corner of his eye, and glimpsed again to make sure it was wisdom he was seeing. It indeed was.  
"Oh yeah. He did seem to have a plan, didn't he?"  
"A flickering of one, I have drawn."  
"You have? Can I see the picture."  
"Well," Ron said modestly, "I'm not that great of an artist, but…" He held out the picture, beaming widely.  
"Wow! That looks a lot like Neville, but what's that hand there for?"  
"The hand of guidance."  
"I'm impressed. So, what was the plan?"  
"I don't know. I'm just a budding artist, so I couldn't draw much more."  
Harry reclined against the wall. "Let's consider who we're talking about. Neville. What would be his colossal plan?"  
The menacing voice piped up: "For the record, I'm listening in."  
"Oh, okay." Harry didn't mind. They were conspiring against it, anyway, so it had every right to listen in.  
"Yeah." The voice fell quiet.  
This, however, irritated Ron. "Why don't you do something constructive with your time? I mean, you are here, holding us hostage. I don't know, why don't you just start killing people or something?"  
"I already did," the voice pointed out. "That corpse on the floor? Yep. Me. I did that."  
"Well, kill systematically." Ron snapped his fingers. "Oh, I know! Kill Hermione. She annoys me."  
"Me, too," the voice of menace said with sympathy. "So, how do you want me to do this?"  
"Do what?" Harry asked distractedly. He was still trying to think of a way to escape. He realized that he cool air from the ventilation shaft was relaxing and would be a nice place to crawl into and sit. He decided that it would take too long to untie the red ribbon that bound it shut, and frowned. What if he was stuck here forever?  
"We're going to kill Hermione," the menacing voice said brightly.  
Ron nodded eagerly. "Okay, voice, you do that. While you do that, Harry and I will speculate on an insanely complex plan to escape and save all of our peers. That shouldn't be too much of a problem, should it?"  
"I don't think so," the voice murmured, deep in thought.  
Hermione, unaware of the plan to have her destroyed, bounded up to Ron. "You know, I think I can find a way out of here. I have studied all the books on escape and know Hogwarts end-to-end."   
"Sorta how Harry knows Draco, right?"  
"Right!" Hermione pulled open a book. "I have written it all in here."  
"What book is that?"  
"My personal journal, my log of life, my diary of immense secrets." Hermione pointed at the page.  
Ron interrupted her. "So you knew all along and planned to keep it a secret?"  
"No. Shut up, Ron." Hermione flashed her oversized teeth at him. "Shut up for just a minute, would you please?"  
Out of nowhere, a gleam followed by a metallic hiss of air pierced the dark room. Hermione's head fell from her shoulders, and landed in Harry's lap. Harry picked it up, gazed blearily at it, and tossed it aside. He wondered if she would expect him to keep tonight's date with her with her head severed. He knew deep down that she would, and would be rather irritated at him for not reapplying her head to her shoulders. He gripped the ribbon from the ventilation shaft and tied it around her neck, reattaching her body and head. It was a splendid job, he did think, but he didn't have much time to dwell on it. In that instant, the sharp edge of the grate landed on his head, bouncing off his neck, and thus decapitating him. It was not a good evening for Harry.  
"Hey, Harry, it's Herm's diary!" Ron bubbled excitedly. He flipped to the beginning of the leather-bound book and read out loud: "'Today is my first day at Hogwarts…' Blah, boring." After skipping ahead several pages, Ron crowed, "Ooooh, controversy! Listen to this: 'Tonight I went out with Dobby-'"  
"Shut up!" Hermione shrieked. "Shut up, shut up! That's personal!"  
"What?" Harry barked. "Dobby? You went out with Dobby?!? I thought we were exclusive, Herm! You tart!"  
He picked up his head and hurled it at her. It bounced squishily and wetly off her torso before rolling into the now-cold ashes of the fireplace. His open eyes glared and his open mouth gaped.  
The menacing voice realized in that moment of chaos that it had lost his power, its effect on these mindless humans, and without reign, anarchy was supreme. It escaped through the ventilation shaft.  
Not much later, the Gryffindors grew restless and filed out of the room through the open door, abandoning the squabbling trio and the corpse of Neville. And, later yet, Ron was elected to train the thingy on Harry's ragged neck so Hermione could see in the darkness to sew it back on. Harry commented later in an exclusive interview with The Wizard Inquirer, "It hurt a lot. Very painful. But it taught me a meaningful lesson…"  
The lesson being such, in the events of an argument, friends should stick together. That is why, verily, that after having Harry's head sewn back on, Dobby sewed all three of them together and tossed Neville's body on for good measure. They smelled terrible for a few months afterward, but their friendship flourished, and they became the best of friends.  
Oh…that's not the lesson? Oh, well then: never pet a seething author who insists on parodying and ridiculing insanely famous characters. And be nice to menacing voices. Yeah. They're cool. 


End file.
